We’re so proud of Lexie for sharing her voice on BBC News last night!
For so many of our team, Access to Work is what makes meaningful work possible. Cuts and delays risk undoing the progress people like them have worked so hard to achieve…
We’re a café with a mission – and we’ll never stop fighting to build inclusive workplaces where everyone can shine. The following text has been taken directly from the BBC website:
The lunchtime rush at the Sea Change in café in Sunderland is under way. The social enterprise employs 25 neurodiverse adults and uses Access to Work to support most of them.
Lexie O’Connor has been at the cafe since it opened in 2019. In between customers she explains how working at the cafe has given her confidence and a sense of pride and now trains others on how to work with neurodiverse and disabled staff.
Lexie’s reapplication took 10 months to come through and when it did the hours for her one-to-one support worker had been greatly reduced, leaving the business to make up the shortfall.
“A lot of employers in that time physically would not be able to manage keeping people like myself employed,” she said.
Lexie says she sees a lot of her colleagues worry about their job prospects because of the problems with Access to Work. The cafe has said it already had to let two members of staff go because support was cut.
“We’re worrying so much about it, it’s affecting the quality of work that we worked so hard to get to in the first place.
“I feel like places like Sea Change are trying their best, they are fighting for people like me.”
Ministers have widely acknowledged Access to Work as a key driver in getting disabled people in work, but in an interview with the BBC, minister for social security and disability, Sir Stephen Timms, said the problem was the “huge numbers of people wanting it”, adding they had been struggling “to keep up with the demand”.
Spending on the programme increased by 41% in 2023-24 to £257.8m.
In February 2025 about 62,000 applications were waiting to be processed, with 33,000 people awaiting payment, according to the DWP.
A government consultation on Access to Work closed at the end of June with ministers currently reviewing what a new scheme could look like.
Read the full story on BBC News here.
